City of Promise (40 page)

He would not demand her bed, but it struck Josh with sudden and remarkable force that he had not actually seen his wife, physically looked at her, since they came out of Mama Jack’s in those tense and hurried moments after Miller came to get him. Nearly a month. That,
coupled with Eileen’s advice, brought him to the door of the bedroom they had once shared.

He knocked once, then went in. And knew at once that this was a new and somehow lesser Mollie. She had become someone different from the woman who got herself up in a remarkably revealing gown and flaunted her blooming figure before a crowd of people she’d never met.
Only one leg, but he can get it over.

Mollie sat beside the window of her bedroom, hands folded in her lap, gazing out into Grand Street and, he’d warrant, seeing nothing of it.

“Leave us please, Tess. I’d like to speak with my wife.”

Tess gathered up her darning and disappeared into the hall, closing the door behind her. Mollie did not turn her head.

“It’s a fine spring day,” Josh said. “Would you perhaps like to go for a walk? Or a drive?”

“No, thank you.” Still not facing him. “I prefer to stay where I am.”

He took the seat Tess had vacated. Mollie’s profile had sharpened, a factor of how drawn she was. “Dr. Thomas says you should be eating a bit more. And getting some fresh air.”

“I’m eating quite as much as I need, thank you.”

“No, you’re not, you . . . Mollie, look at me.”

She turned her head obediently. Her eyes were opaque.

“Look,” he said, “I want to tell you—” He could not imagine how to finish the sentence.

“Yes?” Her tone was polite, as noncommittal as a stranger’s. “I’m listening. What is it you’d like to tell me?”

“Mollie . . .” Josh leaned forward, taking both her hands in his. “I’m so sorry, my love. So very sorry. It was abominably bad luck, but we’ll make a li—”

She made no move to pull away from him. “I do not believe ‘it,’ as you call it, was a matter of luck. A man shot at me. Someone I’d never met and to whom I’d done no harm whatever. I presume it was all to do with your business.”

“Perhaps. I’m not sure. It may have been about making Zac do something. Or . . . Look, do you recall the fellow who came to see the flats that first day after the storm? Anthony—”

“I’m afraid I have not been concentrating on the flats of late. Is there anything else you wish to discuss?”

He let go of her hands. “Your Aunt Eileen says you must have an interest, not just stay in this room grieving all the time.”

“I’m sure Auntie Eileen has good intentions. She does not, however, understand.”

“And neither, you think, do I. That’s it, isn’t it, Mollie? You blame me for what’s happened, and you imagine I do not share your sorrow over our loss.”

“Blame changes nothing. I am trying not to consider it. As for the loss . . . You can still father a child, Joshua. If you wish to divorce me and take a wife who can give you children, I will fully understand.”

“Divorce! In God’s name how can you think I’d even consider such a thing?”

She turned away from him to look out the window once more. “As you wish.”

“No.” He stood up. “Nothing is as I wish at the moment. Please do everything you can to regain your strength. You shall need it. I will have certain requirements of you in the not too distant future.”

It would be good for Mollie, no doubt about it. But face it, he wanted it as well. A home of his own, something that said he’d arrived, that the one-legged middle son who’d never been as clever as his two brothers was a man of property. Why the hell not?

His second building was well underway on Sixty-Third, seven stories already in place and going up at a wonderful clip. A third of the flats were spoken for, never mind that he’d erected the sign only a few days before.
THE CAROLINA—PRIVATE HOMES A NEW YORK GENTLEMAN
CAN AFFORD. DESIRABLE LEASES AVAILABLE
. Naming the new building for his mother had seemed both inspired and obvious once the idea came to him. Particularly after she’d refused to sell him two of her lots on Eighty-Seventh Street and Fourth Avenue at market rates. “You must have them, Josh. A dollar a lot, just to make it legal.”

“Mama, that’s very kind, but are you quite sure? That land’s not worth a great deal now, but someday . . .”

“Someday it will be worth a fortune. I always thought so, Josh. That’s why I bought it. But you have looked after it all these years. And if you’re worried about your brothers and sister, don’t be. Papa will deal with the legacy issues.”

He protested that such concerns were well in the future, but Josh suspected only his father’s extraordinary care had kept her with them this long. Something else he could do nothing about. A home of his own, however . . . that was entirely possible.

No denying the area remained a trash heap superimposed on a wilderness, but Vanderbilt was digging his tunnel. Not as deep as anyone would like and the smoke and fumes and cinders escaping through the vents remained a problem, but the fortunes of upper Fourth Avenue were, Josh was convinced, sure to follow those of the downtown portion. Someday it would be fashionable Park Avenue up here just as it was in Murray Hill. And not all that far in the future. Particularly if he helped it along by building a fine house in advance of the crowd. The pattern, after all, was a New York commonplace. One pioneer broke ground and others arrived in his wake. He’d put up the basic structure—get McKim to design something not too grand, but very nice—then insist that Mollie see to furnishing and equipping it. It might make him seem like a tyrant to demand her involvement, but he was convinced it was in her best interests. And he’d hire a clerk, but require she oversee the bookkeeping. It was getting into a terrible state with him trying to do everything himself.

A man of property. Yes, indeed.

15

“S
UBSTANTIAL,” JOSH HAD
told McKim that June of 1872 when they met in the bar of the Grand Union Hotel. “But simple. Dignified.”

“Elegance, my good man, is always simple.” The architect had pulled a notebook from his breast pocket, moved aside his whiskey, and sketched furiously while he spoke. “Something with classical influence, like this? What do you think?”

Josh leaned forward. “A bow front?”

“Yes. Gives you the best light as well as adding some grace to the exterior. And a pediment above it.”

“Looks vaguely Greek,” Josh said.

“Any objection to that?”

“None at all.” Josh smiled. Mollie Popandropolos memorialized.

“The bay to go up two stories, I think.” McKim added more pencil strokes. “Better proportions. And that will allow you a balcony outside the third-floor windows.”

“You’re thinking four stories?” Josh asked the question while catching the eye of a hovering waiter and pointing to their glasses.

“Yes. Or perhaps five. If you’re planning for children and—”

The waiter brought the refills, depositing the fresh glasses and removing the old in one smooth gesture. The break was just long enough for Joshua to control both his tongue and his feelings. “Four stories is plenty.”

“Fine. You’re sure about only building on one lot? We could do something quite splendid if—”

“One lot,” Josh said firmly. “My mother was exceedingly generous, but I believe in husbanding my resources.”

It was October when he took Mollie uptown to see the finished house. “Quite grand,” she said, accompanying him on a tour of the twelve spacious rooms.

“Quite empty,” Josh said.

He’d tried repeatedly to get her to come during the summer of construction, but though she’d resumed responsibility for his bookkeeping—overseeing a rotund clerk named Hamish Fraser lately come from Edinburgh—she almost never left the house. Until today when he had absolutely insisted.
I mean for us to move next month, Mollie. You’ll have to see the house before furnishing it.

“Next month?” she asked now, her voice seeming to echo through each bare room, obviously aware of the enormity of the task he’d set her. “You’re quite sure?”

“Absolutely certain. I mean to carve my Thanksgiving turkey under my own roof.”

“But there’s nothing here.”

“Nothing,” he agreed cheerfully. “Not a bed to sleep in nor a plate to eat off. No tables, no chairs. No desk for my papers—I should like my study to be the large room in the rear of the second floor, by the way—no chests for clothing nor lamps to read by. Not a curtain on any window or a sheet or a coverlet for the nonexistent beds. It all needs choosing and ordering and arranging. Over to you, my girl. Do me proud.”

Mollie stared at him as if he had lost his mind.

Josh ignored her stunned silence and opened the front door. The hansom that had brought them uptown was waiting to return them to Grand Street. “I’ve a brougham on order, by the way. Being up here requires you to travel in more comfort than the phaeton provides and we can’t rely on cabs this far uptown. The stable will be finished by week’s end.” He pointed with his cane to a brick structure at the rear of the second lot. “Mr. McKim is arranging to fence the whole property as soon as the construction is done. And all the building scrap will be cleared away, of course.”

Mollie was staring in the direction he indicated, across a weed and rubble strewn expanse. “Lilies,” she said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Lilies would be lovely. White lilies and blue delphiniums. Perhaps some dark purple irises as well. In a border just there. And one or two small trees of the sort that flower in spring.”

He had the feeling she was speaking more to herself than to him. But there was a degree of animation in her voice he had not heard since the day they followed Frankie Miller out of Mama Jack’s Cave.

“You know quality, Auntie Eileen. Exactly as you’ve always said. I trust you to make the choices.”

“I’m not sure,” Eileen said, “that’s exactly what Joshua had in mind.”

Mollie waved the objection aside. “Josh wants the house to be furnished and livable in the shortest possible time. And if you do it, so it shall be. Why should he object?”

“Because he wants you to be as you were. That’s the goal of everything he’s done, dear child, surely you know that.”